Darwin’s ‘Law of the Jungle’ led to Fascism

As Darwinism fed racism in the 19th century, it formed the basis of an ideology that would develop and drown the world in blood in the 20th century: Nazism.

A strong Darwinist influence can be seen in Nazi ideologues. When one examines this theory, which was given shape by Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, one comes across such concepts as “natural selection”, “selective mating”, and “the struggle for survival between the races”, which are repeated dozens of time in the works of Darwin. When calling his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler was inspired by the Darwinist struggle for survival and the principle that victory went to the fittest. He particularly talks about the struggle between the races:

History would culminate in a new millennial empire of unparalleled splendour, based on a new racial hierarchy ordained by nature herself (Source:-Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, London: W. W. Norton, 1986, p. 159.)

In the 1933 Nuremberg party rally, Hitler proclaimed that “a higher race subjects to itself a lower race… a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right”.

That the Nazis were influenced by Darwinism is a fact that almost all historians who are expert in the matter accept. The historian Hickman describes Darwinism’s influence on Hitler as follows:

(Hitler) was a firm believer and preacher of evolution. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his psychosis, it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important because]… his book, Mein Kampf, clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and the extermination of the weak to produce a better society.(Source:-Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong, Regnery Publishing, 2000, pp. 235-236)

Hitler, who emerged with these views, dragged the world to violence that had never before been seen. Many ethnic and political groups, and especially the Jews, were exposed to terrible cruelty and slaughter in the Nazi concentration camps. World War II, which began with the Nazi invasion, cost 55 million lives. What lay behind the greatest tragedy in world history was Darwinism’s concept of the “struggle for survival.”